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While groups opposing the shipments of liquid nuclear waste say last week’s crash of a truck loaded with a dangerous chemical is an example of the risks posed by the much more dangerous cargo, a Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) representative described the comparison as “fear mongering.”

CNSC spokesman Aurele Gervais said there is “no comparison between the phosphine incident” and the transport of Highly Enriched Uranyl Nitrate Liquid (HEUNL.)

“Anyone trying to make that comparison is fear-mongering,” Gervais wrote in an email sent Monday morning.

But Gordon Edwards, co-founder and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, said collisions “happen all the time.”

Edwards, a consultant and expert on nuclear issues, was the guest speaker during a meeting organized by the Niagara District Council of Women to discuss concerns about shipments of liquid highly enriched uranium, possibly travelling through Niagara on its 1,700 km journey from the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River Ontario to a disposal site in South Carolina, costing the Canadian government about US$60-million.

The truck that crashed on the QEW last Tuesday, closing the highway to traffic for nearly 12 hours, was loaded with 45 containers of phosphine – a dangerous chemical used in agriculture as a pesticide.

The containers were not punctured in that crash.

“As bad as the chemicals are ... this is another level of magnitude,” Edwards told his audience of about 50 people during the meeting held in Beamsville on Friday. “It might be possible that if we make enough of a row about these liquid waste shipments of nuclear material, it will open the door for considering (preventing) other hazardous material transports.”

In an interview, Edwards said the impact would have been devastating if that truck had been filled with liquid nuclear waste — the spent uranium remaining after being used in the creation of medical isotopes at the plant located north of Petawawa.

If it didn’t leak, he said the impact on the community would have been similar to the crashed truck carrying phosphine. But if it did: “They would have to excavate the highway and bury it as radioactive waste if there was actual leakage,” he said.

And the proximity of the highways to the Great Lakes is another concern for Edwards.

“One of the principals of radiation, if you cut the radiation exposure in half but double the number of people exposed, you still get the same number of cancers,” he said. “It’s the combination of the dose with the population. Because of the large population on the lake, even though it’s diluted, that’s not a solution in any way.”

“Accidents do happen,” added Gracia Janes, environment convener for the National Council of Women of Canada.

“You can say it never will, and then when you least expect it...,” she said. “For the farmers it would be disastrous, for the people it would be disastrous. It would be for everybody and there’s no need for it.”

Niagara Centre MPP Cindy Forster also referred to the truck rollover in letters she wrote on Thursday to the Minister of Health and Long Term Care, Minister of Community Safety and Corrections, and Minister of Environment and Climate Change regarding concerns about the nuclear waste shipments.

“People in Niagara are worried for their safety. The unrelated rollover of a tractor trailer carrying hazardous chemicals through the region this week has only added fuel to the fire,” she wrote.

“It is imperative that our first responders and community safety workers are provided with accurate information about the hazardous material being shipped out of Chalk River. It’s equally imperative that they are given proper training on how to best protect themselves and the citizens they serve in the event of a spill.”

Gervais said the containers carrying the liquid nuclear waste are thoroughly tested before they’re approved, and require certification by both U.S. and Canadian authorities.

In Canada, that certification includes “stringent testing, which simulates both normal and hypothetical accident conditions of transport, including free-drop testing, puncture testing and thermal testing.”

Testing the containers includes dropping them from a height of nine metres, crushing them with a 500-kilogram mass, burning them for 30 minutes in an 800˚C fire, and submerging them under up to 200 metres of water for an hour.

The design of the containers must comply with CNSC regulations, which are based on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations for transporting radioactive material.

Those regulations, he added, “establish strict standards of safety which provide an internationally acceptable level of control of the radiation, nuclear criticality and thermal hazards to persons, property and the environment.”

Gervais said workers involved in the shipments must also have necessary training before receiving CNSC approval.

“Unfortunately, it’s the same thing with all this technology. When it’s good, it’s very good and when it’s bad it’s horrid,” he said.

Even with shielding, Edwards said gamma radiation can penetrate the walls of the container.

“If someone was stuck in a traffic jam for example beside one of those trucks, they would be irradiated – not to a high degree that would kill them or anything, but never the less the longer they’re close to it the more radiation they’re going to get.”

Edwards said neutron radiation can also escape the containment, which is “particularly biologically damaging.”

And there will be far more trips along the highways than originally anticipated.

Edwards said the DoE initially estimated that up to about 150 shipments would take place over the next four years. The U.S. agency, however, recently increased that estimate to as many as 250 shipments.

A U.S. nuclear watchdog group called Savannah River Site Watch believes the first shipment of 232 litres of nuclear waste took place between April 17 and 22.

Although the route the trucks are taking has not been publicly released, Edwards said the Peace Bridge is one potential border crossing the shipments could take.

“It could come through here, it could go through the Thousand Island Bridge, it could go through Sarnia,” Edwards said. “They are leaving all their options open and they will not exclude any particular route as being off limits.”